Slide Show

I did live them.
I do love them so.

From long, flat, metal box
emerge people,
history,
sense of mystery.

Comfortable chair,
kitten at my feet,
friendly window for illumination.
Image by tiny image
I see again
what once illuminated my naive eye.

 

  Slide Show

Bob Komives

Slide: C-11-14

A tower holds once-new telephone lines,
now encrusted
and many too many
(impossible spaghetti).
I must have laughed
then raised my camera.

Slide: C-11-2

House walls rise
part way
as they await
adobe bricks that dry nearby.
A hillside becomes the bricks;
poco-a-poco bricks become a home.

Slide: C-9-25

Yes, I remember.
I let my camera seem to dangle at my side
to sneak this closeup of an earthen foot--
wide, hardened, leathery foot
on sandal carved from discarded tire.
Callouses bulge outward.
This foot walked years on rugged trails
without protection from rubber tread.
The sandal is stylish here in the marketplace,
and also almost necessary
for modern treks upon baking highway asphalt.

Slide: C-9-10

As we wait to board this bus
I snap a picture.
Narrow ladder leads to cargo-laden roof.
The ayudante prepares for yet another climb.
Onto his shoulder,
indigenous farmers load
another voluminous sack of their onions

Slide: C-9-1 

Young girl,
I almost remember you
and your empty basket
on your way into town.
You will buy, perhaps, some eggs
for your mother who labors at home.
You stop here
near where we too have stopped
to watch far below
the low road's rise from the valley.
A boy, younger than you,
guides his pack of limestone burdened burros.
Surely, he hopes to sell his cargo
to those who will refine it
and, in turn,
hope to sell their product
to others
who need plaster to make houses
and others
who, like your mother
must soak corn in lye to make tortillas.Indeed,
such could be the errand
that brings you
with small, empty basket
to town.

Slide: C-6-20

In mid-ground and background,
school children in colors of their flag
--fresh blue and white.
I see most wore shoes that day
to perform their ceremonial calisthenics,
sing hymns,
orate orations.
I remember watching their daily practices
from my porch nearby.
In the foreground,
mixed into the crowd of local adults,
I remember these indigenous women
wearing (head-to-skirt)
bright, intricate cloth
of their village in the cool highlands.
I did not understand then:
they were as foreign to this hot coastal plain as I.
Via a road newly built
they came in trucks
with family and neighbors
to pick cotton
on plantations further down our road.
On this day, we came together
to watch and enjoy a nation's birthday.

Slide: C-6-9

Don Lipe.
Only by this image do I remember you.
Proudly you stand with your three young boys--
one big enough to stand as proudly as you.
He is son of the only man around
who has built and nurtured a table-high seedbed.
Your selected seeds become young plants
to plant later in garden, orchard, and wood.
For now,
they grow above the ground-foraging chickens,
above the mud and the wild things.
You protect them with a canopy of palm leaves
from deluge by rain,
and from burning by sun.

More than most,
you know this land is robbed
from a jungle that wants it back.
You know how mud beneath your feet
will bake and crack,
and pulverize into dust as soft as powder.
I stopped by a few times, Don Lipe,
to praise your ingenuity
and to take this picture.
I regret not stopping more often.
I wish I had sought and found
a way to assist you.

Slide: C-5-23

I see Doña Victoria.

I see a madonna and child.
I see a child holding younger child.
A gathering of women and children 

(and somebody’s dog).
Most walked miles to this clinic
which is clinic by name only.
It has stood here ten years--
yet to be occupied by anyone medical.
They came
to take home powdered milk,
to listen to the Peace Corps worker
explain preparation and nutritional value.
And they came to wait for the nurse.
She was due to come the ten kilometers by bus.
I remember their collective anticipation
as the bus stopped
at distant corner of the futbal field.
No nurse descended.
They came because they were promised
polio vaccinations
for themselves and for their children.
Midst their anticipation and disappointment
they laugh and gossip
for two hours under the sun.
They tell us how they arose at 3:00 that morning
(rather than 4:00)
to get work done
to make this outing possible.

At least they got powdered milk.
They also got to know better their neighbors
for none has been here more than ten years,
Each is from a different, distant town
where life, they say, was tougher.
Did we ask them to return next week
for more milk and another promise?
Conveniently, perhaps,
I do not remember.

Slide: C-13-7

Tikal,
still tall,
a once great temple,
long lost in the conquering jungle,
lost in my ignorance
before capturing my interest.
Who lived in these apartments beside the temple,
walked these passages covered by corbelled limestone arch?
Do we know now?
We were not sure then.
They must have been important
to the bureaucracy,
to the theocracy
to the writing of partially deciphered Mayan history.
 

I wonder when I will be as they:
lost,
rediscovered,
eventually deciphered?

I now close and set aside the box
to emerge from these too-deep thoughts
and wistful sense of mystery.
For, these images
(neither less nor more)
illustrate a chapter in my history.
Fortunate I am
to love that chapter so.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2016 :: Slide Show:: 1608